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Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Tweeting for spooks

It was just
last week that I warned of the dangers of tweeting first and thinking later. Well
the stakes might be even higher if the government has its way over extending internet
surveillance.

Plans are
afoot to introduce legislation with which will greatly increase the state’s
powers to monitor our emails, tweets, Facebook postings, texts and pretty well
anything we do online.

This is, of
course, all under steps to protect us from terrorists. But it is not to be
limited to suspects. It will be access to everything that we do. Under the
present law a warrant is required to access the content of say emails. We are
being assured that the new rules will only permit access to times, dates and
addresses but it seems fanciful to suggest that this will not also involve the
monitoring of content.

This is a
huge invasion of our privacy and one does wonder what difference it will
possibly make in enabling us to sleep safely in our beds. If the authorities
suspect somebody then they can get a warrant. So why is this enhanced power to intrude
needed? Despite re-assurances, do I trust a government to protect my data when
ministers are seen placing confidential documents in a dustbin?

The plans could
well fall foul of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 – the right to
privacy. Now this can be overridden – ‘in the interests of national security, public safety or
the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or
crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the
rights and freedoms of others.’

Now if you imagine how many emails are sent each day in the UK –
millions? billions? – then how much of
what we do and say will have anything to do with national security? As the Guardian’s James Bell said yesterday it is like looking for a tiny needle in a
much bigger haystack –